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The Most-Hated Son

Last winter, after more than three decades of silence, I desperately wanted to see my mother before it was too late. Not to make amends, really. I wanted to see her once and not be afraid. I had been courting her in recent years, sending flowers, fruit and candy for her birthday and holidays, asking to visit. She acknowledged my gifts with terse handwritten notes. She sent back the designer jelly beans with the scrawl “I prefer dark chocolate.” In the past, she ignored me completely, or her response ended with “you stupid idiot.” We were making progress. Yet she still refused to see me.

We’d been estranged since I was 19, when I made harsh, yet true, statements about the horrors of living with her at the custody trial for my younger sister. My family’s unstated code had been that nobody was allowed to reveal my mother’s alcoholism. She was enraged that I broke her rules of secrecy. When my sister, who was 10, moved in with my father, my mother cut off all contact with me. Now a psychologist in my 50s, I link my specialty in substance abuse to growing up with a violent, abusive drunk. I often tell my patients that “addicts depend on substances, not people,” and advise them throughout recovery to “lead the least-secretive life you can.” Yet I’ve come to regret speaking out publicly against my mother; no child should have to choose to testify against a parent.

In February, I received a longer, charming thank-you note from her signed, “With Love” — very uncharacteristic. It turned out that a speech therapist had written it for her. I soon received a call from a doctor warning that, at 89, my mother was frail and fading fast. She resided in a high-end nursing home in Dallas. She showed signs of dementia after a stroke and couldn’t speak, hear or walk well.

I decided that if she couldn’t communicate, she could no longer refuse me. So I made the six-hour drive from Fayetteville, Ark., with my wife and 12-year-old daughter, Kathy. Although my mother didn’t say a word, she responded to my statements and queries with body movements, nods and facial expressions that clearly showed she knew me. Not that she was happy to see me. When I gave her a bar of dark chocolate, her shaking hand slowly pulled it to the edge of the table and let it drop to the floor. Then she stepped on it. Twice. Did she fear I might poison her?

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Credit
Holly Wales

“I know this is hard for you,” I said calmly, picking it up and putting it in front of her again. “I get it. But I’m not going to hurt you. You don’t have to take my candy if you don’t want to.” Then she ate it.

My mother smiled at my wife, who is strong, smart and willful, traits my mother respected. She stared at Kathy so intently that it spooked her. I guessed that Kathy looked the way my mother did 77 years earlier. When we went to leave, I asked my mother if I could hug her. She nodded, and I started to. But then she drew back and wouldn’t budge. Kathy whispered, “She needs you to move further away from her first, Dad.” After I did, my mother just shuffled by.

My mother had cut off all my siblings over the years, and my brothers and sister were shocked that I even went to see her, especially because she always hated me the most — even before the divorce trial. I was the smallest, weak and sick as an infant. She once screamed that she’d wanted to let me die, like an injured animal. Did I forgive her? Absolutely not. Would I protect her now, if she needed anything? Yes. On the ride home, my daughter said what my own mother couldn’t: “You are a good son.”

A month later I returned with a photograph of my mother as a beautiful 24-year-old actress; it depicted her cameo in a movie called “Bedlam,” with Boris Karloff. She appeared fascinated by her old image and was pleased when I showed the staff who she used to be. They knew in advance I was coming, so they spruced her up. Her cheeks looked pinker, her gray hair puffy. We were both more comfortable this time. She never pulled away, frowned or shook her head no. I felt relieved and lighter. Then I wondered if it was that she just liked the attention. When I pointed to a cellphone picture of Kathy, whom she met the last trip, she had no idea who Kathy was. Perhaps my mother was acting warmly to me only because she had no idea who I was.

Before I left, I asked about the nursing home’s alcohol policy. They allowed her to have one glass of wine at 3:30, which she did every single day. That she never forgot.

Frederick Woolverton is director of the Village Institute for Psychotherapy in Fayetteville, Ark.

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A version of this article appears in print on November 14, 2010, on Page MM66 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: The Most Hated Son. Today's Paper|Subscribe